World Series Game 3: Houston, we have a series

paulb0t

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Jul 15, 2005
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That's BS. A 5 game suspension is a pretty big suspension for a non-pitcher. You can get away with despicable behavior in the playoffs.
Unbelievably weak effort by MLB. Not for the suspension, but by delaying it until the start of the season. If someone on the Dodgers drills him on the first pitch today, does their suspension get held until next season? Or, are they signaling that being a shitbag is okay in the World Series?

Fuck MLB.
 

MuzzyField

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Doesn’t he actually lose salary by being suspended during the regular season in 2018?

I’m okay with not fucking the team and city now and deal with the individual shithead solo.

Edit: un-autocorrected d back to f.
 
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scottyno

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Dec 7, 2008
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Doesn’t he actually lose salary by being suspended during the regular season in 2018?

I’m okay with not ducking the team and city now and deal with the individual shithead solo.
I was just about to post this, he's losing almost $400k in salary that he wouldn't lose if he got a world series suspension, that's hardly "getting away with it"
 

The Needler

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Dec 7, 2016
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Yep. Some people seem to think the team should be punished on an equal level as the player. I disagree. This penalty is properly punitive to the player, yet doesnt severely penalize the team for something that's not its fault.
 

curly2

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Jul 8, 2003
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He didn’t even say the last one, he said something like it was not his intent to insult anyone. That’s another whole level down. Tough shit might be just two more levels down from what he said.
I was commenting more on general "apologies" than Gurriel's.
 

paulb0t

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Jul 15, 2005
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Doesn’t he actually lose salary by being suspended during the regular season in 2018?

I’m okay with not ducking the team and city now and deal with the individual shithead solo.
Okay, where's the cutoff? If Wood or Maeda or Morrow drills him, are they off the hook too? Manfred opened up the door by saying that the World Series is bigger than racism or racist gestures. They're not. Just such an awful precedent to set. If he was going to suspend him next season, he should've waited until the series was over while they completed some faux investigation.

Manfred comes out looking absolutely terrible on this, whether or not you think the suspension is warranted.
 

nvalvo

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Jul 16, 2005
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This is unfortunate. Gurriel's actions are awful, I think we can all agree, but they are also culturally specific. Conversations about race are different in different parts of the world, as anyone who has spent meaningful time abroad — almost anywhere — can attest. Most Latin players spend a better part of a decade in the States before we put them on TV, but Yuli Gurriel was basically transplanted from a different cultural context directly into the limelight.

It's hard to be a public figure in a culture you didn't grow up in. One reason is that you may have trouble navigating the boundaries of acceptable and unacceptable racism. It's pretty ludicrous for Major League Baseball to suspend Gurriel for this while protecting this trademark:



I'd say both Gurriel's gesture and the Chief Wahoo team logo are equally racist, but MLB is looking at the speck in Gurriel's eye while disregarding the beam in their own.

Given Darvish's background and biography, he has acknowledged that he faced different kinds of racial prejudice since childhood. I'm not surprised that he's responded with such equanimity. As another transplant, he probably also has some sympathy for Gurriel being so obviously over his head.

edit: I should clarify. Manfred should suspend Gurriel for this. And then, when he's done doing that, he should tell the Indians that they have 18 months to stop using that logo or face league sanctions.

edit again: But he won't. Because he doesn't care about racism, he cares about players embarrassing the owners, but not apparently about the owners embarrassing themselves.
 
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PayrodsFirstClutchHit

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Okay, where's the cutoff? If Wood or Maeda or Morrow drills him, are they off the hook too? Manfred opened up the door by saying that the World Series is bigger than racism or racist gestures. They're not. Just such an awful precedent to set. If he was going to suspend him next season, he should've waited until the series was over while they completed some faux investigation.

Manfred comes out looking absolutely terrible on this, whether or not you think the suspension is warranted.

I think the line is that one act is offensive. One act would physically harm or cause injury. Hard to say both acts should be treated equally.
 

jon abbey

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Jul 15, 2005
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Okay, where's the cutoff? If Wood or Maeda or Morrow drills him, are they off the hook too? Manfred opened up the door by saying that the World Series is bigger than racism or racist gestures. They're not. Just such an awful precedent to set. If he was going to suspend him next season, he should've waited until the series was over while they completed some faux investigation.

Manfred comes out looking absolutely terrible on this, whether or not you think the suspension is warranted.
What you're saying is essentially irrelevant because of the appeals process as was posted earlier. Any suspension would end up being served next year anyway, this way it will be the full five games with no appeal (the union has already agreed).
 

DennyDoyle'sBoil

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Sep 9, 2008
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What you're saying is essentially irrelevant because of the appeals process as was posted earlier. Any suspension would end up being served next year anyway, this way it will be the full five games with no appeal (the union has already agreed).
Right. This seems like a negotiated outcome, and may have been the best that the Commissioner could do. If you suspend him for tonight's game, he appeals. And then what? He ends up postponing it so that it's game 1 of the 2018 regular season or something?

Also, baseball discipline arbitration, as I understand it, has considerably more teeth than in the NFL. You get an actual neutral. More important, the key issue in these, I think, is precedent and proportionality. Baseball does not want that kind of arbitration, where the union on Guriel's behalf is bringing up past incidents or anecdotes where player X said this or player Y said that in the clubhouse or in the dugout.

The union agrees not to appeal. And Manfred thus gets a non-ambiguous precedent that he can use in future arbitrations if he needs to in the future. Do I wish that baseline were 10 or even 20 games? I do. But my guess is that the number was largely driven by the point at which the union would agree not to appeal this one. They had the upper hand in the negotiation, because it's the day before game 4 of a pretty compelling world series and the Commissioner needed to address this decisively before game time. Like any negotiation, my guess is that both sides are bit unhappy.

Let's hope the negative attention he gets tonight on the broadcast and the 5 games and corresponding paycheck reduction is enough to be a deterrent in the future.
 

MuzzyField

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Right. This seems like a negotiated outcome, and may have been the best that the Commissioner could do. If you suspend him for tonight's game, he appeals. And then what? He ends up postponing it so that it's game 1 of the 2018 regular season or something?

Also, baseball discipline arbitration, as I understand it, has considerably more teeth than in the NFL. You get an actual neutral. More important, the key issue in these, I think, is precedent and proportionality. Baseball does not want that kind of arbitration, where the union on Guriel's behalf is bringing up past incidents or anecdotes where player X said this or player Y said that in the clubhouse or in the dugout.

The union agrees not to appeal. And Manfred thus gets a non-ambiguous precedent that he can use in future arbitrations if he needs to in the future. Do I wish that baseline were 10 or even 20 games? I do. But my guess is that the number was largely driven by the point at which the union would agree not to appeal this one. They had the upper hand in the negotiation, because it's the day before game 4 of a pretty compelling world series and the Commissioner needed to address this decisively before game time. Like any negotiation, my guess is that both sides are bit unhappy.

Let's hope the negative attention he gets tonight on the broadcast and the 5 games and corresponding paycheck reduction is enough to be a deterrent in the future.
Given the stage and spotlight, the negative attention should end up being the real punishment.
 

DourDoerr

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Yep. Some people seem to think the team should be punished on an equal level as the player. I disagree. This penalty is properly punitive to the player, yet doesnt severely penalize the team for something that's not its fault.
I don't know. I think if you punish the player and it hurts the team, that's a more powerful message for that player. A punishment from the league feels vaguely abstract, but when you're feeling pressure from teammates or feel you've let them down, well that hits home hard.
 

DourDoerr

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One of the difficulties of punishing now is how does measure World Series against regular season games? Or do you make the distinction at all? 1 WS game is huge and 5 is devastating, but 1 regular season game is meaningless and 5 games is fairly negligible depending on the opponents.

I think future bright lines need to address that and I also wouldn't mind if they made a distinction between a malicious act and one that probably arises from ignorance. That might get too complicated, but it might be worth considering.